Sex-dependent effects of ethanol withdrawal from a single- and repeated binge episode exposures on social anxiety-like behavior and neuropeptide gene expression in adolescent rats.

Ethanol withdrawal sensitivity is a risk factor for the development of alcohol use disorder. Heavy episodic drinking during adolescence often encompasses repeated periods of withdrawal. Adolescent intermittent ethanol exposure of laboratory rodents produces several neurobiological deficits that differ between sexes, but the sensitivity to withdrawal as a contributor to the observed sex differences is not clear.

Using Smartphones to Reduce Research Burden in a Neurodegenerative Population and Assessing Participant Adherence: A Randomized Clinical Trial and Two Observational Studies.

Background: Smartphone studies provide an opportunity to collect frequent data at a low burden on participants. Therefore, smartphones may enable data collection from people with progressive neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis at high frequencies for a long duration. However, the progressive decline in patients' cognitive and functional abilities could also hamper the feasibility of collecting patient-reported outcomes, audio recordings, and location data in the long term.

Patient reported outcomes in ALS: characteristics of the self-entry ALS Functional Rating Scale-revised and the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale.

This study characterized two patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs): a patient-facing adaptation of the revised amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) Functional Rating Scale ("self-entry ALSFRS-R") and the Activities-specific Balance Confidence (ABC) Scale. : ALS patients presenting to clinic completed PROMs that included (1) the self-entry ALSFRS-R, (2) the Activities-specific Balance Confidence Scale (ABC Scale), and (3) a question about falls. PROM data were compared to one another and to the traditional ALSFRS-R collected by trained evaluators in clinic ("standard ALSFRS-R").

Smartphone data during the COVID-19 pandemic can quantify behavioral changes in people with ALS.

Introduction: Passive data from smartphone sensors may be useful for health-care research. Our aim was to use the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic as a positive control to assess the ability to quantify behavioral changes in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) from smartphone data.

Methods: Eight participants used the Beiwe smartphone application, which passively measured their location during the COVID-19 outbreak.